Dear Santa

Originally published 28 December 1987

I know it’s ear­ly to start think­ing about next Christ­mas — this year’s cel­e­bra­tions are bare­ly over — but I thought I should write while my thoughts are still fresh in my mind.

Every year, San­ta, we see few­er sci­ence toys under the tree. You used to have a warm place in your heart for toys that were both edu­ca­tion­al and fun, but late­ly it seems you have sold out on toys that have any instruc­tive content.

Back when I was a kid, it was every boy’s dream to own a Gilbert chem­istry set, an Erec­tor Set, and maybe a set of Lionel trains. These were the pre­mier Christ­mas presents, top-of-the-line stuff, for the boys who had been very, very good. (As for the girls, I’ll get to them in a minute).

We learned from these toys, even as we had fun. Grant­ed, all we ever did with the chem­istry set was make stink bombs, and invis­i­ble ink, and flasks that popped and fizzed and scared the day­lights out of our younger sib­lings, but at the same time we learned some­thing about the way the world was put together.

We noticed how oxy­gen latch­es onto almost any ele­ment that gets in its way, rust­ing and burn­ing. We noticed how car­bon makes such a ter­rif­ic skele­ton for a whole bunch of nifty mol­e­cules. We noticed how Moth­er Nature’s recipe book is writ­ten in whole num­bers. And most of the time we did­n’t even notice that we were notic­ing some­thing useful.

Putting things together

As for the Erec­tor Set, boy, there was a toy that a kid could love and a moth­er could hate: hun­dreds of lit­tle screws and nuts to get spread all over the rug and rat­tle around in the Hoover. We learned a lot about mechan­ics from that toy, about levers, and cen­ters of grav­i­ty, and gear ratios, and fric­tion. Most of all we learned that it is more fun to put things togeth­er than to take them apart.

The elec­tric trains that you put under our tree were more instruc­tive than any of the motor­ized toys you dis­trib­ute today. Things were less prepack­aged in those days. We had to strip our own wires to make elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions. We had to under­stand the nature of a cir­cuit or the trains would­n’t run. And the trans­form­ers and rheostats that came with our Lionels were real, hon­est-to-God pieces of elec­tri­cal machinery.

Sure, the thing that was most fun was to arrange a stu­pen­dous head-on col­li­sion between two speed­ing loco­mo­tives, but, let me tell you San­ta, you made toys in those days that could take it.

I was down at the mall recent­ly, in one of those toy stores that are as big as ware­hous­es, to see what is cur­rent­ly avail­able in sci-tech toys. Not much, it turns out. There were only half-a-dozen chem­istry sets, tucked away at the back of the store with the wood-burn­ing kits and met­al-tap­ping kits, toys that were bor­ing even when I was a kid.

Where are the science toys?

The entire dis­play of sci­ence toys, includ­ing micro­scopes, tele­scopes, chem­istry sets, and elec­tron­ic kits, was a tenth of the size of the sec­tion giv­en over to heav­i­ly-armed lit­tle male dolls with rip­pling mus­cles called “action men.” The way I look at it, there’s not a tenth of the action in one of those dolls than in a good old Gilbert’s test tube filled with water and bicar­bon­ate of soda.

I did find Erec­tor Sets, one or two of them on the back wall of the store, with a much larg­er pile of Robot­ix build­ing sets (“Build Tyran­nix, Ter­rokor Night Attack­er”) and Legions of Pow­er build­ing sets (“Build a Uni­verse of Bat­tle Machines”). Even the Erec­tor Set peo­ple have come out with some­thing called Laser Erec­tor (“Build the Laser­Plex Com­bat Sta­tion”). I don’t know, San­ta, I can’t help but feel that you might be los­ing sight of the mean­ing of Christmas.

One of the best tech­ni­cal toys on the mar­ket today is a Japan­ese inven­tion called Capsela, a col­lec­tion of motors and gears and elec­tron­ics in trans­par­ent inter­con­nect­ing spheres that let you see what’s hap­pen­ing even as you build excit­ing toys. I found one box of Capsela at our local toy empo­ri­um, and this in a store with two aisles full of toy guns.

Oh yes, there’s lots of high-tech in the toy store, but its hid­den deep inside the toys, in the talk­ing dolls, com­put­er­ized cars, and laser death rays. The trou­ble with your new toys, San­ta, is a kid sees what hap­pens with­out ever know­ing how it hap­pens. And, of course, that’s one of the afflic­tions of our times: We have turned our lives over to machines that we don’t under­stand. It seems to me, San­ta, that you could do a lot to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion by bring­ing back some of the old favorites from yesteryear.

And one more thing. It’s about time you rec­og­nized that sci­ence toys aren’t just boy toys. Many of my best stu­dents in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing are young women, and that’s one thing that has changed for the bet­ter. You could encour­age this trend by dis­trib­ut­ing the chem­istry sets and elec­tron­ics kits and tele­scopes more equi­tably among the girls and the boys. Get with it, San­ta. There is no rea­son why girls who will choose careers in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing should not be giv­en an equal chance for a head start.